At the invitation of king Manuel I of Portugal, Vespucci participated as observer in several voyages that explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. On the first of these voyages he was aboard the ship that discovered that South America extended much further south than previously thought.

Charles Darwin, Hitler, and Tragic Effects of Evolutionary Theory

Favoured Races

Carolyn Reeves

Following are excerpts from article co-authored by Carolyn Reeves and Marni Kendricks at the site Underground Paradigm

For a moment let us first consider the world-wide influence of a scientist named Charles Darwin. Any high school student in any public school in America has studied about the “Father of Evolution” and many have fully accepted and praised his life’s work. For me, there is something that doesn’t seem quite right about Darwin’s famous book, Origin of the Species. If you read the full title of the book, you may begin to see the problem: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

Years before Darwin got around to publishing this book, he had come to believe that humans evolved over millions of years by natural selection in the same way he thought other animals had evolved. He concluded that the first humans were not a distinct creation of God, but rather a product of evolution from ape-like animals that produced different species of humans.

Darwin wrote another book, The Descent of Manand Selection in Relation to Sex, in 1871. He wrote a follow up book, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, in 1872. In these books he tried to show that man was just another primate. He tried to show that humans were similar to “higher” animals in physical characteristics, emotions, and intelligence. This was his chief argument for concluding that humans had evolved from other animals.

Hitler began reading books and articles by extreme followers of Darwin as a young boy. By the time he had become an adult, he had read a large number of materials on human evolution in which a frequent conclusion was that the time had come to take more control of human evolution. These authors proposed that there should be policies to help the superior races increase in numbers and the inferior races to decrease in numbers

The tiny poisonous seeds sown by both intellectuals and uneducated racists led to unthinkable beliefs and actions in the 20th century. Unfortunately, these lingering racial beliefs seem to pervade our culture in a way that most people do not recognize.

The absolute tragedy of these beliefs that have adversely affected millions is that they are not true! All humans–past, present, and future—are part of the same human race. Fuegians from South America, Aborigines from Australia, and slaves from Africa were never subhuman. These people may have been forced into primitive living conditions at some point. If you have ever seen the TV series, Naked and Afraid, consider how perfectly rational humans would have great difficulty surviving if they were isolated in a remote area without metal tools, weapons, and basic supplies. However, they, like all humans, were descendants of the first two original humans, Adam and Eve—not from a Common Ancestor randomly birthed in a warm pond. Stated in Biblical language, all people are of one blood and are descended from Eve.

Almighty God purposely planned, designed, and created humans in His image. And because of this fact, every person deserves to be treated with respect. There is no justification for treating anyone with contempt because of his or her race.

One of the major planks of any person’s worldview is finding a satisfactory answer to the question, “Who am I?” Bible-believing Christians would probably include something like this in their answer: “I am a child of God, created in His image, and I relate to all other humans as people who were created in His image”

Thomas Jefferson, along with the signers of the Declaration of Independence, believed that God created all humans with the same basic rights, because all humans are made in the image of God. The worldview accepted by most Americans is incorporated in Jefferson’s elegant words found in the Declaration of Independence, “. . . it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . . . .”

Notes:

The tragic history of the effects of Darwin’s proposal of human evolution has been documented in Evolution’s Fatal Fruit by Tom DeRosa with a forward by Dr. D. James Kennedy (available from www.CreationStudies.org).

Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview by Jerry Bergman is a thoroughly documented book on Hitler’s quest to produce a superior race. Hitler’s worldview beliefs, along with the main scientists, academians, doctors, and leaders who supported him, are discussed and analyzed.

Classic Smetana

All things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator. ~Alma 30:44

Smetana – Die Moldau (Karajan)

This is not about the Moldau in Prague. The song is about all the river, from beginning to Prague. Every part of this classical song expresses part of the Moldau between headwater and Prague. Faster places, slower places, etc… This is how was the song composed.

Bedřich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana (Czech pronunciation: [ˈbɛdr̝ɪx ˈsmɛtana] 2 March 1824 – 12 May 1884) was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country’s aspirations to independent statehood. He has been regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his opera The Bartered Bride and for the symphonic cycle Má vlast (“My Homeland”), which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer’s native land.

Smetana was naturally gifted as a composer, and gave his first public performance at the age of 6. After conventional schooling, he studied music under Josef Proksch in Prague. His first nationalistic music was written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated. After failing to establish his career in Prague, he left for Sweden, where he set up as a teacher and choirmaster in Gothenburg, and began to write large-scale orchestral works. During this period of his life Smetana was twice married; of six daughters, three died in infancy.

In the early 1860s, a more liberal political climate in Bohemia encouraged Smetana to return permanently to Prague. He threw himself into the musical life of the city, primarily as a champion of the new genre of Czech opera. In 1866 his first two operas, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride, were premiered at Prague’s new Provisional Theatre, the latter achieving great popularity. In that same year, Smetana became the theatre’s principal conductor, but the years of his conductorship were marked by controversy. Factions within the city’s musical establishment considered his identification with the progressive ideas of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner inimical to the development of a distinctively Czech opera style. This opposition interfered with his creative work, and might have hastened a decline in health that precipitated his resignation from the theatre in 1874.

By the end of 1874, Smetana had become completely deaf but, freed from his theatre duties and the related controversies, he began a period of sustained composition that continued for almost the rest of his life. His contributions to Czech music were increasingly recognised and honoured, but a mental collapse early in 1884 led to his incarceration in an asylum and subsequent death. Smetana’s reputation as the founding father of Czech music has endured in his native country, where advocates have raised his status above that of his contemporaries and successors. However, relatively few of Smetana’s works are in the international repertory, and most foreign commentators tend to regard Antonín Dvořák as a more significant Czech composer.

Dinner Time Topics for Thursday

The Founders’ Basic Principles: 28 Great Ideas that changed the world

From The 5,000 Year Leap—A Miracle that Changed the World

By W. Cleon Skousen

US Constitution Series 3: Founding Fathers Quotes on Good Leadership

NOTE: The following quotations show how the Founding Fathers knew by personal experience, as well as the study of history, how human nature defaults to tyranny, corruption, and plunder in government if leadership is devoid of virtue. Today we are seeing the fulfillment of their sad predictions.

Principle #3

The most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally stable people is to elect virtuous leaders

“…thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness [unjust gain]; and place such over them, to be rulers …” ~Exodus 18:21

A favorite scripture of the day was Proverbs 29:2, which says: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.”

Samuel Adams

But neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.

Thomas Jefferson

It would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society.

John Adams

Politics are the divine science, after all. How is it possible that any man should ever think of making it subservient to his own little passions and mean private interests? Ye baseborn sons of fallen Adam, is the end of politics a fortune, a family, a gilded coach, a train of horses, and a troop of livery servants, balls at Court, splendid dinners and suppers? Yet the divine science of politics is at length in Europe reduced to a mechanical system composed of these materials.

I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

Making Public Office an Honor Rather than a Position of Profit

As Benjamin Franklin traveled in Europe, he noted that there was a violent struggle for appointments to public office because they paid so well. He felt this was a serious mistake.

In the early history of the United States, community offices were looked upon as stations of honor granted to the recipients by an admiring community, state, or nation. These offices were therefore often filled by those who performed their services with little or no compensation. Even when an annual salary of $25,000 was provided in the Constitution for President Washington, he determined to somehow manage without it. He did the same thing while serving as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces during the Revolutionary War. Not all could afford to do this, but it was considered the proper procedure when circumstances permitted it. (Skousen, pp. 64-65)

Franklin’s Address to the Constitutional Convention

Franklin fervently hoped this policy could be perpetuated in America from generation to generation. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, he gave a discourse on the need to fix the course of American public service so that it would always attract men of public virtue and repel scoundrels scrambling for a soft job. He said:

Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effect. Place before the eyes of such men a post of honor, that shall at the same time be a place of profit, and they will move heaven and earth to obtain it.

Haggling for High-Salaried Public Offices Was Repugnant to the Founders

Franklin had seen enough of the world to make a general observation to the Constitutional Convention which the members could not help but hear with deep respect. The men at the Convention were there at great personal sacrifice; some, like Madison, on borrowed money. Franklin warned that high salaries for government offices are the best way to attract scoundrels and drive from the halls of public office those men who possess true merit and virtue. (Skousen, p.66)

Benjamin Franklin

And what kind are the men that will strive for this profitable preeminence, through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention, the infinite mutual abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters? It will NOT be the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits. These will thrust themselves into your government, and be your rulers. And these, too, will be mistaken in the expected happiness of their situation; for their vanquished competitors, of the same spirit, and from the same motives, will perpetually be endeavoring to distress their administration, thwart their measures, and render them odious to the people.

Benjamin Franklin’s Prophecy: the road to Government Plunder

Sir, though we may set out in the beginning with moderate salaries, we shall find that such will not be of long continuance. Reasons will never be wanting for proposed augmentations [increases]; and there will always be a party for giving more to the rulers, that the rulers, that the rulers may be able in return to give more to them.

Hence, as history informs us, there has been in every state and kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing and the governed, the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning princes or enslaving of the people.

Generally, indeed, the ruling power carries its point, and we see the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes, the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans, and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure.

How Obama and Holder Changed Broward County Law Enforcement for Racial Reasons

The article is about efforts undertaken to avoid arresting students. And the article speaks to the concern that Broward County might have turned a blind eye to the behavior of Nikolas Cruz because they wanted to lower the number of student suspensions, which is a big part of Obama-Holder prison reform. So this is five-year-old story. Well, four and a half years old. It’s December of 2013.

So you see the way this works if you’re a leftist, you don’t count the crime. You look at the percentage of arrests and imprisonment, and you compare that to the population at large, and you find racial bias. And the only way you can do that is if you assume that many of these crimes being committed by minorities are not really being committed, that they’re only being charged because there’s a racial bias in the police department or the sheriff’s department. And that racial bias is indicated by the exorbitant percentage of African-Americans and minorities in jail or in prison and your belief that it wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for racism.

So you start out by claiming that law enforcement is corrupt because they’re targeting minorities who aren’t committing crimes, they’re arresting them and imprisoning them, and you want to fix it. That’s the starting point for this. They say, “Look, the black population is, what, 15% of the country, but in the prisons it’s 70%, that proves bias.” It doesn’t, unless you’re a liberal.

It’s a fascinating piece, but the primary assertion here is that in order to obtain money from the federal government and programs that were instituted by Obama and Eric Holder, local governments were rewarded with these grants if they kept school arrests down. Let’s stop the pipeline from schools to prison. Right here in this 2013 story, “Reversing Broward County’s School-to-Prison Pipeline.”

Ann Coulter: The School to Mass Murder Pipeline

School and law enforcement officials knew Cruz was a ticking time bomb. They did nothing because of a deliberate, willful, bragged-about policy to end the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

He assaulted students, cursed out teachers, kicked in classroom doors, started fist fights, threw chairs, threatened to kill other students, mutilated small animals, pulled a rifle on his mother, drank gasoline and cut himself, among other “red flags.”

Over and over again, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reported Cruz’s terrifying behavior to school administrators, including Kelvin Greenleaf, “security specialist,” and Peter Mahmood, head of JROTC.

At least three students showed school administrators Cruz’s near-constant messages threatening to kill them — e.g., “I am going to enjoy seeing you down on the grass,” “Im going to watch ypu bleed,” “iam going to shoot you dead” — including one that came with a photo of Cruz’s guns. They warned school authorities that he was bringing weapons to school. They filed written reports.

Threatening to kill someone is a felony. In addition to locking Cruz away for a while, having a felony record would have prevented him from purchasing a gun.

But Cruz was never arrested. He wasn’t referred to law enforcement. He wasn’t even expelled.

Instead, Cruz was just moved around from school to school — six transfers in three years. But he was always sent back to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in order to mainstream him, so that he could get a good job someday!

The moronic idea behind the “school-to-prison pipeline” is that the only reason so many “black and brown bodies” are in prison is because they were disciplined in high school, diminishing their opportunities. End the discipline and … problem solved!

It’s like “The Wizard of Oz” in reverse. The Wizard told the Scarecrow: You don’t need an education, you just need a diploma! The school-to-prison pipeline idiocy tells students: You don’t need to behave in high school, you just need to leave with no criminal record!

Removing Consequences Encourages Bad Behavior

Of course, killjoys will say that removing the consequences of bad behavior only encourages more bad behavior.

But in this case, we have a paper trail. In the pursuit of a demented ideology, specific people agreed not to report, arrest or prosecute dangerous students like Nikolas Cruz.

History: Christian Art and Michelangelo

It is instructive to study the great art that—albeit done by persons of imperfect character—was inspired by Jesus Christ, and still blesses us, hundreds of years later. ~C.D.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni[1] (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo (Italian pronunciation: [mikeˈlandʒelo]), was an ItalianRenaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.[2] Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, and ever since then he has been held to be one of the greatest artists of all time.[2] A number of his works in painting, sculpture, and architecture rank among the most famous in existence.[2] His output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of St. Peter’s Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo’s design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.

Prophet Jeremiah as depicted by Michelangelo, on Sistine chapel ceiling

In a demonstration of Michelangelo’s unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.[3] Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino (“the divine one”).[4] One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo’s impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.

Rome

Michelangelo arrived in Rome 25 June 1496[19] at the age of 21. On 4 July of the same year, he began work on a commission for Cardinal Raffaele Riario, an over-life-size statue of the Roman wine god, Bacchus. However, upon completion, the work was rejected by the cardinal, and subsequently entered the collection of the banker Jacopo Galli, for his garden.

In November 1497, the French ambassador in the Holy See commissioned one of his most famous works, the Pietà and the contract was agreed upon in August of the following year. The contemporary opinion about this work – “a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture” – was summarized by Vasari: “It is certainly a miracle that a formless block of stone could ever have been reduced to a perfection that nature is scarcely able to create in the flesh.”

In Rome, Michelangelo lived near the church of Santa Maria di Loreto. Here, according to the legend, he fell in love with Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara and a poet.[citation needed] His house was demolished in 1874, and the remaining architectural elements saved by the new proprietors were destroyed in 1930. Today a modern reconstruction of Michelangelo’s house can be seen on the Janiculum hill. It is also during this period that skeptics allege Michelangelo executed the sculpture Laocoön and His Sons which resides in the Vatican.[20]

Sistine Chapel ceiling

Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; the work took approximately four years to complete (1508-1512)

In 1505 Michelangelo was invited back to Rome by the newly elected Pope Julius II. He was commissioned to build the Pope’s tomb. Under the patronage of the Pope, Michelangelo had to constantly stop work on the tomb in order to accomplish numerous other tasks. Because of these interruptions, Michelangelo worked on the tomb for 40 years. The tomb, of which the central feature is Michelangelo’s statue of Moses, was never finished to Michelangelo’s satisfaction. It is located in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome.

During the same period, Michelangelo took the commission to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took approximately four years to complete (1508-1512). According to Michelangelo’s account, Bramante and Raphael convinced the Pope to commission Michelangelo in a medium not familiar to the artist. This was done in order that he, Michelangelo, would suffer unfavorable comparisons with his rival Raphael, who at the time was at the peak of his own artistry as the primo fresco painter. However, this story is discounted by modern historians on the grounds of contemporary evidence, and may merely have been a reflection of the artist’s own perspective.

Michelangelo was originally commissioned to paint the 12 Apostles against a starry sky, but lobbied for a different and more complex scheme, representing creation, the Downfall of Man and the Promise of Salvation through the prophets and Genealogy of Christ. The work is part of a larger scheme of decoration within the chapel which represents much of the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

The composition eventually contained over 300 figures and had at its center nine episodes from the Book of Genesis, divided into three groups: God’s Creation of the Earth; God’s Creation of Humankind and their fall from God’s grace; and lastly, the state of Humanity as represented by Noah and his family. On the pendentives supporting the ceiling are painted twelve men and women who prophesied the coming of the Jesus. They are seven prophets of Israel and five Sibyls, prophetic women of the Classical world.

Following the Russian suppression of the Uprising, he settled in Paris as part of Poland’s Great Emigration. During the remaining 19 years of his life, Chopin gave only some 30 public performances, preferring the more intimate atmosphere of the salon; he supported himself by selling his compositions and teaching piano. After some romantic dalliances with Polish women, including an abortive engagement, from 1837 to 1847 he carried on a relationship with the French writer Amantine Dupin, aka George Sand. For most of his life Chopin suffered from poor health; he died in Paris in 1849 at age 39.

The great majority of Chopin’s compositions were written for the piano as solo instrument; all of his extant works feature the piano in one way or another. Chopin, according to Arthur Hedley, “had the rare gift of a very personal melody, expressive of heart-felt emotion, and his music is penetrated by a poetic feeling that has an almost universal appeal…. Present-day evaluation places him among the immortals of music by reason of his insight into the secret places of the heart and because of his awareness of the magical new sonorities to be drawn from the piano.”[40]

The first systematic, if imperfect, study of Chopin’s style came in F. P. Laurencin’s 1861 Die Harmonik der Neuzeit. Laurencin concluded that “Chopin is one of the most brilliant exceptional natures that have ever stridden onto the stage of history and life, he is one who can never be exhausted nor stand before a void. Chopin is the musical progone[74] of all progones until now.”[75]

Robert Schumann, speaking of Chopin’s Sonata in B-flat minor, wrote that “he alone begins and ends a work like this: with dissonances, through dissonances, and in dissonances”, and in Chopin’s music he discerned “cannon concealed amid blossoms”.[75]

According to Tad Szulc, though technically demanding,[76] Chopin’s works emphasize nuance and expressive depth rather than sheer virtuosity. Vladimir Horowitz referred to Chopin as “the only truly great composer for the piano”.[77]

Chopin’s music for the piano combined a unique rhythmic sense (particularly his use of rubato), frequent use of chromaticism, and counterpoint. This mixture produces a particularly fragile sound in the melody and the harmony, which are nonetheless underpinned by solid and interesting harmonic techniques. He took the new salon genre of the nocturne, invented by Irish composer John Field, to a deeper level of sophistication. Three of Chopin’s twenty-one Nocturnes were published only after his death in 1849, contrary to his wishes.[78] He also endowed popular dance forms, such as the Polish mazurek and the Viennese Waltz, with a greater range of melody and expression.

Chopin’s mazurkas, while based somewhat on the traditional Polish dance (the mazurek), were different from the traditional variety in that they were suitable for concerts halls as well as dance settings. With his mazurkas, Chopin brought a new sense of nationalism, which was an idea that other composers writing both at the same time as, and after, Chopin would also incorporate into their compositions. Chopin’s nationalism was a great influence and inspiration for many other composers, especially Eastern Europeans, and he was one of the first composers to clearly express nationalism through his music.Furthermore, he was the first composer to take a national genre of music from his home country and transform it into a genre worthy of the general concert-going public, thereby creating an entirely new genre.

Chopin was the first to write ballades[79] and scherzi as individual pieces. He took the example of Bach’s preludes and fugues and essentially established a new genre with his own Préludes. He reinvented the étude,[80] expanding on the idea and making it into a gorgeous, eloquent and emotional showpiece, and he used his Études to teach his own revolutionary style[17] – for instance playing with the weak fingers (3, 4, and 5) in fast figures (Op. 10, No. 2), playing in octaves (Op. 25, No. 10), and playing black keys with the thumb (Op. 10, No. 5).

Dinner Topics for Thursday

Methods for Teaching Charity

Love

Individual and personal caring that goes both beneath and beyond loyalty and respect. Love for friends, neighbors, even adversaries. And a prioritized, lifelong commitment of love for family.

Sample Method for Preschoolers: “Secret Services”

This can help young children taste the delight of anonymous giving. With your little ones, decide on something you can do for someone anonymously. It may be baking cookies and leaving a little basket of them on Daddy’s pillow or on the bed of an older brother or sister. It may be leaving a bowl of fruit on the doorstep of an elderly neighbor or sending a grandparent a new pair of slippers with no return address on the package.

Sample Method for Elementary Age: “Show Physical Love”

Show your love openly and teach your children that overt affection and love is okay. Give hugs. Children need to feel their parents’ physical love as much during their elementary-school-age years as they do as preschoolers. Whether it is as your child goes off to school, just before he pops into bed, or, as we do at our house, just after family prayer, a sincere hug is appreciated by everyone, even teenagers, whether they will openly admit it or not. Be sure to tell children verbally that you love them as well as providing hugs. A quick “love you” as they dash off with their friends will give them added security.

Sample Method for Adolescents: “Look for Special Needs”

It’s important to teach adolescent-age children to look for those who need help.

One father taught awareness and love for others by asking his son every day, when he came home from school, “Son, did you help anyone today?” At first the son looked back at him blankly and said, “Well, no.” The father just smiled and changed the subject. After being asked the same question and giving the same answer about twenty days in a row, one day the son finally said, “Yes!” and told how he had noticed a handicapped boy and helped him get to class.

As parents we need to let our children know that it is important to us that they learn to love others by looking for opportunities to help. As always, example is the best teacher and we need to share our own personal efforts to give help or service.

Put Police Officer at School because Gun Free Zones Don’t Work

Put Police Stations in Schools?

RUSH: So the point is you’ve got armed police in the schools now who are—

CALLER: That is correct.

RUSH: — actually on duty and, as such, in their offices, which are at the schools?

CALLER: That is correct.

RUSH: Okay. So how many people have been killed?

CALLER: Zero.

RUSH: Really? Zero.

CALLER: It works. We’ve had great success with it.

RUSH: Now, are these —

CALLER: One side note —

RUSH: Are the officers that are in these satellite offices in the schools, they are side-armed? Their weapons are visible?

CALLER: That is correct.

RUSH: Not concealed. And they’re in uniform, so they’re not plainclothes. So they’re plainly visible and it’s obvious that they’re police officers armed? Everybody in the school where those cops are can tell that about them?

CALLER: That is correct. They’re parked out in front in the parking lot.

Now, stop and think of that as an idea. Instead of teachers and security people with concealed carry — which, look, I see the problem with that. There’s no perfect solution here. But I’ll tell you, we know enough now to know that all this rage and anger at the NRA is totally worthless. It’s misdirected. It is a waste of time. The NRA has no culpability in what happened at that high school. It’s stupid and a waste of time to get mad at them! Stupid and a waste of time to get mad at Trump. So when that happens, you can readily identify a political agenda in action and not a serious discussion of solutions.

Imagine establishing a tiny police office in every school. Just like you’ve got the school nurse, you have the school doctor, you have the school STD director, you’ve got the school police. Except that they are actual police from the community, but their desks are in the school and not at the police department. How many of you, where you live…? You know, you go to the mall, and there’s a little kiosk where it’s a satellite police department? This may be actually something to build on. You talk about uniformed police readily identifiable.

They’re carrying their sidearms. Nothing concealed. By definition, they are trained and ready,

Why Gun-Free Zones in Schools?

CALLER: Rush, everything on this planet that has any value whatsoever — whether it be a Picasso or bar of gold — is guarded with firearms. I don’t understand why people don’t think that their children are just as valuable as a bar of gold, a dollar bill, or a Picasso. I’m not talking about the media or the liberal legislators. I understand what game they’re playing.

I’m talking about people who have children in school who are against arming people to protect their children. I can’t wrap my head around the mind-set! When they take their children to a museum, there’s an armed guard there, and the children understand that the armed guard is there to protect them. Why wouldn’t they understand that the armed guard at their school is there to protect them?

Rush:

A football coach died shielding students. He took the bullets. Imagine if he had had access to a weapon to shut it down. People are starting now to make sense of this, and they’re making comparisons like I did with air marshals. I made the comparison that we arm every public entity. We have security — armed, professional security — at every public entity including airports, including malls, including stadiums. Everywhere except in the schools! Everywhere except the schools.

Father of Murdered Student

Despite all of the school shootings there have been, despite all the mass murder, not one step has been taken to actually stop it. Not a step has been taken to actually prevent it. Since Columbine, there hasn’t been anything done to prevent this. Since Columbine, we’ve had one answer: “Damn that NRA! Damn politicians that accept money from the NRA. Damn those guns.” That’s been it. That’s the sum total. Here is the father who was at the White House listening session yesterday afternoon. His name is Andrew Pollack. He spoke about his 17-year-old daughter, Meadow, who was killed in the Parkland shooting.

POLLACK: We protect airports. We protect concerts, stadiums, embassies, the Department of Education that I walked in today that has a security guard in the elevator. How do you think that makes me feel? In the elevator, they got a security guard. I’m… I’m very angry that this happened, ’cause it keeps happening. 9/11 happened once, and they fix everything. How many schools, how many children have to get shot? It stops here with this administration and me. I’m not gonna sleep until it’s fixed — and, Mr. President, we’re gonna fix it.

RUSH: I checked out a little bit more of the White House meeting going on right now, state and local officials about gun safety. I tell you what, Trump is on a roll here on concealed carry. I mean, he sounds like he’s really advocating it now, which I can tell you is causing conniption fits in the newsrooms and studios of Drive-By Media carrying this. Their heads are exploding right now. This is picking up momentum. It’s picking up steam in terms of Trump explaining it to people, how it would work, why it’s a good idea.(paraphrasing) “Can you imagine a teacher that used to be a Marine,” he said, “an expert already in handling firearms. Would you have a problem, would you know that your child is safe if that teacher was able to deal with –” by the way, concealed carry already is in the schools. Are you aware of that? The bad guys. The bad guys show up, you can’t tell they’ve got a gun until they bring it out and start opening fire. Concealed carry, Mr. Toobin, is already there. Concealed carry, Senator Murphy, is already there. The hope is that whoever is carrying never has to use it.

The idea is deterrence.

If a perp knows that he’s gonna get shot — I have heard the reaction, “They know they’re gonna get shot. It’s suicide by cop in there. These bad guys, they want to die.” Well, this guy Cruz doesn’t want to die. I think it’s an example of the indoctrination that has gone on for decades in relationship to children and guns being a horrible, horrible thing.

“A teacher would have a concealed gun on them,” Trump told more than 40 people in the State Dining Room. “They would go for special training.

“They would be there — and you would no longer have a gun-free zone.

“A gun-free zone to a maniac is, ‘Let’s go in and let’s attack’ — because bullets aren’t coming back at us.”

Trump noted that, on average, a school shooting lasts about 3 minutes, with first responders generally arriving within as long as 8 minutes.

All things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator. ~Alma 30:44

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; For in him we live, and move, and have our being; … for we are also his offspring. ~Saint Paul, Acts 17: 24,28

There is a God, and he hath created all things. ~2 Nephi 2:14

Darwin was aware of gaps in his theory. . . Even Darwin recognized his life’s work as a theory and left the door ajar. ~Keith Merrill

Evolution has a lot of holes filled with Silly Putty, but the one gaping wound they cannot hide is the Moral Law. ~Keith Merrill

Charles Darwin loved his wife and children. He paid his taxes and never kicked his dog. But Charles Darwin had a big idea, and ideas have consequences. ~movie: ”What Hath Darwin Wrought?”